Sheikh Bakri Sapalo (born Abubakar Garad Usman; November 1895 - 5 April 1980) was an Oromo scholar, poet and religious teacher. He is best known as the inventor of a writing system for the Oromo language. Life Bakri Sapalo was the son of Garad Usman Oda, a landowner in the area of the Sapalo River who was among those who were carried over into Emperor Menelik's regime after the conquest of the Emirate of Harar. His son Abubakar was born eight years after the conquest of Harar, and probably some sixteen years after Garad Usman had embraced Islam; Abubakar had three brothers and four sisters. Although reputed to have been a good Muslim and remembered to this day for his skill in oratory and command of the Oromo language, Garad Usman remained illiterate. R. J. Hayward and Mohammed Hassan speculate, based on her name, that his mother Kadiga was also a Muslim. After receiving his elementary education, Abubakar went to Chercher where he studied under the Islamic teacher Sheikh Umar Aliyye Balbaletti, and afterwards went to Harar to study with Sheikh Yusuf Adam for a number of years there. Although he also studied under other Islamic teachers, these were the only ones he wrote biographies about. Bakri obtained his educational achievement through the support of famous Harari scholar Abdalla Walensi. After devoting 20 years of his life to his studies, he returned to his home village of Sapalo, where he began to teach. Besides religion, the subjects he taught included geography, history, mathematics, astronomy, Arabic, and the composition of writings in the Oromo language. He also began to compose poetry in the Oromo language, which not only brought him fame but the name he afterwards was known by, Sheikh Bakri Sapalo: "Bakri" is the popular form of "Abubakar" and Sapalo after his village. Sheikh Bakri eventually left Sapalo and taught in a number of places, of which the three best known are Hortu, near Dire Dawa, the city of Dire Dawa itself, and Addelle, a place some 25 kilometers from Dire Dawa, on the road to Harar. It was at Addelle where he built a school and what came to be known as his mosque. He is said to have married a local woman at every place he stayed, at least 11 of whom are known. He had eighteen children by three of his wives, thirteen sons and five daughters.